Service-based functionality is commonly employed in networked environments utilizing client-server architectures. Such functionality enables users to store various subsets of information at different locations, rather than storing all the information on a single computer. In this manner, client devices that are connected to the network are capable of accessing the information as needed.
To this end, “policy profiles” are often implemented to manage the services that a client device may wish to access. Policy profiles may define settings, configurations, and/or attributes related to a user, workstation, group of workstations, or other client device that may be connected to the network.
Generally, determining which policy profiles are required or effective for a given client device has been the responsibility of the client device itself. In traditional systems, a client device may query a server which maintains policy profile information for a plurality of client devices. The policy information may be stored within different components of the server. Thus, a client device desiring to obtain its policy information would query each component to determine whether the component contains policy profiles relevant to the device. The client device would then assemble the policy information obtained from each component, and subsequently perform a series of computations to determine which policy profiles are effective for its configuration.
A problem associated with this traditional approach is that the effective policy profile computations are often repeated. That is, many client devices perform the same set of computations to determine their effective policy profiles. In addition, multiple processes within a single client device may need to perform the same computations, adding to the redundancies and ultimately wasting processing time and resources. Furthermore, should any problems associated with the policy profile information and/or computations arise, such problems would have to be corrected at each individual client device.
These and other drawbacks exist.